What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.

Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Those physical difficulties which you cannot account for, be very slow to arraign; for he that would be wiser than Nature would be wiser than God.

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring.